Thank you for that informative essay. I actually was more interested by Epicurus’s thoughts on knowledge.

I was especially interested by this: “we only have the capacity to believe that we are understanding what we are seeing or reading. But there is no guarantee that we are not just seeing the square-shaped tower from a distance.” Still, there is a final truth about the shape of the tower, which we will eventually realize if we keep going in the right direction.

The difference between believing something and thinking something is becoming lost to our culture. That is dangerous for us humans. We depend on our rational capacity for our very survival in our material existence.

Beliefs have to do with some reality outside material existence. They are not necessarily irrational, but they are not rational. They are extra-rational.

All beliefs are absolutely valid for their believers. Knowledge of material existence, while contingent, is dependent on consistency with material reality.

We acquire such knowledge by exercising our rational capacity — thinking, not believing. It is of the utmost importance that we recognize the ultimate contingency of knowledge of material existence, but, again, final truths are possible to obtain. Such sufficiently validated knowledge of material reality really should be accepted by all rational beings — all humans.

Global warming is the penultimate example. People who don’t want to accept the reality of it insist that they don’t have to because in the end it is just another belief (which scientists and liberals are seeking to impose on others).

Heretofore we have depended on beliefs, whether religious (theological) or secular (ideological) for governing governance. That has given beliefs a privileged status. Ideological beliefs have been especially privileged because they have been deemed to be ‘rational’.

Ideological beliefs are no more rationalistic than religious beliefs are. That confusion has contributed immensely to the broader confusion of beliefs and rationally derived knowledge.

It turns out that rationality provides an ethic for governing governance (for individuals, the political process, and the economy) that follows from observation within material existence. If curious, it is summarized in a “5 min read” here in Medium.